Downward Causation: Useful or Misguided Idea?

[DBT]

Well, kinda.

It's certainly the case that mental states supervene on physical states. That's just a commitment to monism. However, rather than argue something I've demonstrated before, to no discernable effect, I'll just point you at the work of Donald Davidson and Jaegwon Kim on anomalous monism. This isn't an argument, merely pointing you in a direction that is available. However, if you want to argue the case, rather than making a statement of what seems intuitively obvious to you and assuming that stands as a refutation, as both you and UM have done, I'd suggest that you have a go at explaining how the Banach Tarski paradox is remotely possible if what you imply is true.

If understanding the mind/brain were as simple as following what is intuitively obvious, there wouldn't be a problem with understanding how we work.

As for UM, until he realises that the public relations department isn't the management...

It's not that it is 'intuitively obvious' to me that the ability to do logic is a function of neural architecture/ brain, but that this is what the available evidence supports. If the work of Donald Davidson and Jaegwon Kim suggests otherwise, perhaps you could provide quotes.

Unfortunately, not all philosophy can be done in short quotes. Sometimes one just has to follow an extended argument to its conclusion.

Here's the wiki on it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalous_monism

Ted H's objection relies on an issue with denotation and assumes that the mental is just another denotation of the physical description. This isn't the case. Quote apart from the constitution arguments of Lynne Rudder Baker, the simple fact is that if he were correct, there wouldn't be a problem of other minds. Mental events can only be experienced from the inside, they are what a users user illusion feels like to the user. That's a damn sight more than mere denotation.

You will not be able to find any evidence that the brain is directlywired to do logic. However, the brain is and can be wired to instantiate virtual machines that emulate doing logic. Computers are directly wired to do logic, brains are not.

...and maths an logic can do things with mathematical objects that cannot be done with isomorphic physical objects. B-T is one unambiguous example of that. Again, there isn't a single quote, there is just doing the hard work of understanding it.

Whether you can be bothered is entirely up to you, but you are in no position to argue about it unless you have.

I didn't claim that brain is 'directly' wired to do logic, but that it is the overall neural architecture and complexity of a brain that enables its ability to do logic, or not.

Obviously there isn't a bundle of neurons within the brain that are specifically dedicated to logic. Of course it requires more than than that.

There is one overall element/brain function that can, in it's absence, eliminate a brains ability to do logic, eliminate not only the ability to do logic but the ability to think and act rationally or recognize surroundings and self; memory function.

 

[Subsymbolic]

Unfortunately, not all philosophy can be done in short quotes. Sometimes one just has to follow an extended argument to its conclusion.

Here's the wiki on it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalous_monism

Ted H's objection relies on an issue with denotation and assumes that the mental is just another denotation of the physical description. This isn't the case. Quote apart from the constitution arguments of Lynne Rudder Baker, the simple fact is that if he were correct, there wouldn't be a problem of other minds. Mental events can only be experienced from the inside, they are what a users user illusion feels like to the user. That's a damn sight more than mere denotation.

You will not be able to find any evidence that the brain is directlywired to do logic. However, the brain is and can be wired to instantiate virtual machines that emulate doing logic. Computers are directly wired to do logic, brains are not.

...and maths an logic can do things with mathematical objects that cannot be done with isomorphic physical objects. B-T is one unambiguous example of that. Again, there isn't a single quote, there is just doing the hard work of understanding it.

Whether you can be bothered is entirely up to you, but you are in no position to argue about it unless you have.

I didn't claim that brain is 'directly' wired to do logic, but that it is the overall neural architecture and complexity of a brain that enables its ability to do logic, or not.

Cool

Obviously there isn't a bundle of neurons within the brain that are specifically dedicated to logic. Of course it requires more than than that.

Well, there are certainly areas that are more dedicated than others: Broca's, Wernickes' and so on. Lose or damage these and there are fairly predictable deficits. If you are going to be running a deep grooved massively parallel network simulating serial processes then you want to keep it out of the way of areas that deal with information in a more superpositional way.

There is one overall element/brain function that can, in it's absence, eliminate a brains ability to do logic, eliminate not only the ability to do logic but the ability to think and act rationally or recognize surroundings and self; memory function.

Sure, but that's a bit like saying that pulling the legs off spiders makes them go deaf. You trash the ability to store and restore information and it makes it hard for processing to happen even if everything else is working just fine.

 

[untermensche]

You have no idea what consciousness is.

It is a completely unexplained phenomena.

Nothing is known about it objectively.

You have no grounds to make claims about what it can and cannot do.

There is reflexive brain controlled respiration and there is the ability to take a deep breath at will.

Rubbish. There is enough evidence to show that what effects the brain in turn effects its ability to generate consciousness, alcohol, drugs, physical trauma, chemical imbalance, etc, etc, etc.

All this has been pointed out to you numerous times, including studies, references and quotes. You can't face the fact that conscious brain activity equals conscious experience. The existence of multiple feed back loops and information input from multiple regions of the brain doesn't change the fact of brain agency, brain state and condition.

This is only about the 50th time you have presented this seriously flawed argument.

Let me try to make it simple for you.

It is a hypothesis that some kind of unknown brain activity creates consciousness.

The fact that if I give you LSD your experiences will drastically change is evidence to support this hypothesis.

There is also the hypothesis that the consciousness can effect the brain.

Two completely separate hypotheses.

Having your experiences change because a drug was taken does not tell us anything about what consciousness can do to the brain.

A person under the influence of LSD can still move their arm at will.

It just looks a lot cooler.

 

[ruby sparks]

I don't know, it seems pretty obvious to me that the result of a calculation done in maths (that can't be done anywhere else) can and will inform my thinking and thus my action, in the real world. I've used the example of being chased by Laplace's demon several times to make that point for B-T. So yes, I'm quite sure that the two do interact and that it is a prime facie example of non mysterious downward causation in which mental events (my calculation of an example of B-T in my head) being able to cause physical events, like behaviour.

I don't understand the Laplace's demon thing and I don't understand the BT Paradox. However........I'm wondering why we need to invoke either, when surely we can just say that conscious thoughts can't be done anywhere else (and so are fully mental)? It would seem to be as secure. And in fact, is doing a mathematical calculation not just an example of it (conscious thinking)? Except when a calculation is not done consciously. But then I'm thinking that wouldn't qualify as 'mental'.

Assuming it's ok to say the above, which of course allows me to neatly sidestep a couple of things I don't fully grasp (hooray), I agree that it certainly feels like conscious thoughts affect behaviour, but how would we know if they actually did, or whether for example the conscious thoughts (or feelings) were just uncausal epiphenomena, of the sort that a p-zombie would not experience?

 

[Subsymbolic]

I don't know, it seems pretty obvious to me that the result of a calculation done in maths (that can't be done anywhere else) can and will inform my thinking and thus my action, in the real world. I've used the example of being chased by Laplace's demon several times to make that point for B-T. So yes, I'm quite sure that the two do interact and that it is a prime facie example of non mysterious downward causation in which mental events (my calculation of an example of B-T in my head) being able to cause physical events, like behaviour.

I don't understand the Laplace's demon thing and I don't understand the BT Paradox. However........I'm wondering why we need to invoke either, when surely we can just say that conscious thoughts can't be done anywhere else (and so are fully mental)? It would seem to be as secure. And in fact, is doing a mathematical calculation not just an example of it (conscious thinking)?

I'd be happy, no, I'd be delighted to just do that. However, my problem, as you note, is simply that how things feel, while indefeasible about certain aspects of the mental, like how it feels, certainly is not a remotely reliable guide to how it is. So you could argue that how things seem, however inaccurately, only seem that way to you and how things seem certainly can cause behaviour. However, that leaves doors open all over the place. The B-T argument doesn't.

I'll be honest, I think any instrumentalist intentional ascription actually falls into the same category as B-T, to me, it's a logical game: a rational (logical) agent acts on beliefs to bring about desires. What's a belief? anything that reliably supports predictions and explanations of rational behaviour. The fact is that we don't have beliefs, it's impossible for us to be rational and desires are often just plain complicated as they, at least, often seem to isomorphic but conceptualised versions of less precise, but very real, biological (i.e. non conceptualised content) categories, like fear, desire and so on. This is what Davidson is driving at, but Davidson is a real pain in the bum to read, even compared to B-T...

Except when a calculation is not done consciously. But then I'm thinking that wouldn't qualify as 'mental'.

This is where it gets a bit complex. I've been at pains to say that B-T is calculated in a platonic space. I'm not claiming any special status for the mental (with this argument) B-T establishes that a purely logical Platonic space is irreducibly emergent. So I'm perfectly happy that a non conscious automated theorem prover, even a fully mechanical one, such as, say, Babbage's engine, could also compute B-T. It's the non equivalence between logic and physics that I'm driving at. All I want from this is an example of something that, while unthreateningly naturalistic (in a way that will not cause Angra Mainyu to feel it necessary to jump up and down on me...) also demonstrates that there are things that, while instantiated in the physical, are at least partially independent of it. Personally I think there are examples littered all over the place, but most involve buying metaphysical assumptions that most people will not buy without a knock down argument for doing so. That's what B-T buys me.

Once you accept that some things, while made of physical stuff that conform to physical laws, do not behave in a way that can be predicted from a physical stance, then wide vistas open up. It's that first step... To me, any game at all that can generate novel outcomes based upon a full understanding of the rules is likely to be practically irreducibly emergent. The moment you add in something like the axiom of choice then that moves from practically, to logically irreducible and bingo. For all but the obsessive follower of Laplace or God, the former is quite good enough for any practical purposes.

Assuming it's ok to say the above, which of course allows me to neatly sidestep a couple of things I don't fully grasp (hooray), I agree that it certainly feels like conscious thoughts affect behaviour, but how would we know if they actually did, or whether for example the conscious thoughts (or feelings) were just uncausal epiphenomena, of the sort that a p-zombie would not experience?

I'll be honest, I think that convincing P-zombies can't be real, because meat works as it does and consciousness is just what it feels like for meat to be working properly. As such I'm never too scared of them. However (ignoring that caveat) a P zombie could still do logic perfectly well and thus access a Platonic space, just not a conscious one, so even P-Zombies could do B-T in their heads, because they understand the laws of logic, maths and so on as these are fully public states of intersubjective agreement about the rules of the game.

 

[Subsymbolic]

You have no idea what consciousness is.

It is a completely unexplained phenomena.

Nothing is known about it objectively.

You have no grounds to make claims about what it can and cannot do.

There is reflexive brain controlled respiration and there is the ability to take a deep breath at will.

Rubbish. There is enough evidence to show that what effects the brain in turn effects its ability to generate consciousness, alcohol, drugs, physical trauma, chemical imbalance, etc, etc, etc.

All this has been pointed out to you numerous times, including studies, references and quotes. You can't face the fact that conscious brain activity equals conscious experience. The existence of multiple feed back loops and information input from multiple regions of the brain doesn't change the fact of brain agency, brain state and condition.

This is only about the 50th time you have presented this seriously flawed argument.

Let me try to make it simple for you.

It is a hypothesis that some kind of unknown brain activity creates consciousness.

The fact that if I give you LSD your experiences will drastically change is evidence to support this hypothesis.

There is also the hypothesis that the consciousness can effect the brain.

Two completely separate hypotheses.

Having your experiences change because a drug was taken does not tell us anything about what consciousness can do to the brain.

A person under the influence of LSD can still move their arm at will.

It just looks a lot cooler.

The problem is less this and more the idea that consciousness isn't just a brain process. The moment you want to separate out the two in a way that means the mind doesn't entirely supervene on the brain then you are back at Descartes arguing that the mind and the body are separate. They are not. They are the same events seen from two different perspectives: the first person and the third person. However, the view can be very different from two perspectives.

All you need for the mental to effect the physical is for any difference in view to be acted upon. This is unproblematic in the case of (as they say) C- fibres firing being pain but much more problematic in the case of the brain instantiating logical or symbolic structures using physical resources. There the minds eye view can be quite different to the brains eye view. I'm pretty sure most people think we might act on the outcome of a chain of logic...

 

[untermensche]

The problem is less this and more the idea that consciousness isn't just a brain process. The moment you want to separate out the two in a way that means the mind doesn't entirely supervene on the brain then you are back at Descartes arguing that the mind and the body are separate. They are not. They are the same events seen from two different perspectives: the first person and the third person. However, the view can be very different from two perspectives.

All you need for the mental to effect the physical is for any difference in view to be acted upon. This is unproblematic in the case of (as they say) C- fibres firing being pain but much more problematic in the case of the brain instantiating logical or symbolic structures using physical resources. There the minds eye view can be quite different to the brains eye view. I'm pretty sure most people think we might act on the outcome of a chain of logic...

What Descartes said was that it was not possible to question the existence of the mind. If there is thinking there must be something capable of being aware of thoughts. There must also be something that creates thoughts. There seems to be something that can order thoughts and reject some ideas as false and accept some ideas as true.

What consciousness is objectively is unknown.

It is an unexplained phenomena that is only known subjectively.

It is an effect of unknown brain processes, not a process. It may be some unknown quantum effect or combination of quantum effects or a totally unknown effect. It certainly is not any known electrical or magnetic or chemical effect.

It is an effect that is very persistent and consistent and appears to be able to influence the body. It appears to be able to move the arm, it appears to be able to lower the blood pressure.

And as a persistent effect of some unknown process of the brain it is separated from the brain, distinct from it. But since it is an effect of the brain it is intimately close to the brain and there is no reason to think it can't have an influence on the brain. The brain can be influenced by very small stimulations. Something like a brain can turn a very small stimulation into something large.

As far as pain it is greatly subjective. It is a subjective experience influenced by thoughts and emotions.

The brain supplies the pain experience but the mind either adds to it or subtracts from it.

Those that deny the influence of the mind you wonder what they are making that conclusion with.

 

[Subsymbolic]

The problem is less this and more the idea that consciousness isn't just a brain process. The moment you want to separate out the two in a way that means the mind doesn't entirely supervene on the brain then you are back at Descartes arguing that the mind and the body are separate. They are not. They are the same events seen from two different perspectives: the first person and the third person. However, the view can be very different from two perspectives.

All you need for the mental to effect the physical is for any difference in view to be acted upon. This is unproblematic in the case of (as they say) C- fibres firing being pain but much more problematic in the case of the brain instantiating logical or symbolic structures using physical resources. There the minds eye view can be quite different to the brains eye view. I'm pretty sure most people think we might act on the outcome of a chain of logic...

What Descartes said was that it was not possible to question the existence of the mind. If there is thinking there must be something capable of being aware of thoughts. There must also be something that creates thoughts. There seems to be something that can order thoughts and reject some ideas as false and accept some ideas as true.

Yes, he said that, but that's no counter argument, because he also said, and I quote:

And, firstly, because I know that all which I clearly and distinctly conceive can be produced by God exactly as I conceive it, it is sufficient that I am able clearly and distinctly to conceive one thing apart from another, in order to be certain that the one is different from the other, seeing they may at least be made to exist separately, by the omnipotence of God; and it matters not by what power this separation is made, in order to be compelled to judge them different; and, therefore, merely because I know with certitude that I exist, and because, in the meantime, I do not observe that aught necessarily belongs to my nature or essence beyond my being a thinking thing, I rightly conclude that my essence consists only in my being a thinking thing or a substance whose whole essence or nature is merely thinking]. And although I may, or rather, as I will shortly say, although I certainly do possess a body with which I am very closely conjoined; nevertheless, because, on the one hand, I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in as far as I am only a thinking and unextended thing, and as, on the other hand, I possess a distinct idea of body, in as far as it is only an extended and unthinking thing, it is certain that I, that is, my mind, by which I am what I am], is entirely and truly distinct from my body, and may exist without it.

Meditation 6 paragraph 9

Which sounds a lot like:

Descartes arguing that the mind and the body are separate

I'll only note that among the many flaws in the argument, it begs the question as he assumes that the mind and body are separate in his proof that the mind and body are separate. If he assumed that the mind is the body then his argument doesn't work.

What consciousness is objectively is unknown.

So you keep saying. However, you now need to show me your argument that demonstrates that consciousness is independent of the brain, because the Cartesian one doesn't work.

It is an unexplained phenomena that is only known subjectively.

So you keep saying. However, you now need to show me your argument that demonstrates that consciousness is independent of the brain, because the Cartesian one doesn't work.

It is an effect of unknown brain processes, not a process. It may be some unknown quantum effect or combination of quantum effects or a totally unknown effect. It certainly is not any known electrical or magnetic or chemical effect.

So you keep saying. However, you now need to show me your argument that demonstrates that consciousness is independent of the brain, because the Cartesian one doesn't work.

It is an effect that is very persistent and consistent and appears to be able to influence the body. It appears to be able to move the arm, it appears to be able to lower the blood pressure.

So you keep saying. However, you now need to show me your argument that demonstrates that consciousness is independent of the brain, because the Cartesian one doesn't work.

And as a persistent effect of some unknown process of the brain it is separated from the brain, distinct from it.

Why does there have to be an extra process? why can't it just be what it feels like to be a brain that works like that, modified by all the cultural mind tools like language? Then, of course, further modified, in both directions, by the interaction of brain and mind tools in a virtuous evolutionary circle.

But since it is an effect of the brain it is intimately close to the brain and there is no reason to think it can't have an influence on the brain. The brain can be influenced by very small stimulations. Something like a brain can turn a very small stimulation into something large.

So you keep saying. However, you now need to show me your argument that demonstrates that consciousness is independent of the brain, because the Cartesian one doesn't work.

As far as pain it is greatly subjective. It is a subjective experience influenced by thoughts and emotions.

Sure.

The brain supplies the pain experience but the mind either adds to it or subtracts from it.

So you keep saying. However, you now need to show me your argument that demonstrates that the mind is independent of the brain, because the Cartesian one doesn't work.

Those that deny the influence of the mind you wonder what they are making that conclusion with.

I'm not denying the influence of the mind. I'm denying that it's different from the brain. To be explicit, I'm putting forward a property dualist position, that the mind and the body are the same thing, just with different properties from different perspectives, specifically the first and third person. You are putting forward a substance dualist position following Descartes. Things have moved on a bit since then.

 

[ruby sparks]

It is an effect that is very persistent and consistent and appears to be able to influence the body. It appears to be able to move the arm, it appears to be able to lower the blood pressure.

Yes. And at this time, I think it is fair to say that we do not know if it actually influences or just seems to. I mean, if we had to pick one, we might pick that it does. But we could be wrong.

Note that this is not a free will question. The mental (by which I think we mean conscious thoughts) could affect the physical (brain) and thus behaviour and still not do so freely, so that is a slightly separate issue. Nor am I taking a stance on substance dualism. The question of whether the mental could influence the physical would, I think, remain even if they were different aspects of the same thing.

 

[ruby sparks]

I'll be honest, I think that convincing P-zombies can't be real, because meat works as it does and consciousness is just what it feels like for meat to be working properly. As such I'm never too scared of them. However (ignoring that caveat) a P zombie could still do logic perfectly well and thus access a Platonic space, just not a conscious one, so even P-Zombies could do B-T in their heads, because they understand the laws of logic, maths and so on as these are fully public states of intersubjective agreement about the rules of the game.

Regarding what you say about the BT Paradox, I admit I'm not following, and not sure if it's directly relevant to the OP (downward causation)?

Regarding the above, then if a P-Zombie (or any non consciousness-experiencing computing machine since this seems to be an example of a P-Zombie, just not a human one) doesn't have the mental experience to go along with the thinking (cognition) then there is no downward causation from mental to physical, I think (because there is no mental).

If I were to try to think of something non-physical (and non-mental too) which might be a candidate for affecting the physical, I might suggest information. Information is, I think independent of the physical it might or might not be instantiated in, in that it is interoperable, that is to say it can be instantiated in different physical bases. I suppose this means it is not truly independent, in that it cannot exist without a base of some sort, but at the same time it is not dependent on any particular base.

If you buy that then I think it might be possible to say that information instantiated in a particular base will affect that base. Hey presto, downward causation?

Note that there is no need for the base to experience any sensation to go along with this process/affect, which cuts out the need for any consideration of the ever-popular but apparently intractable 'mental affecting or not affecting the physical' version of the OP issue.

Note also that the question of whether the information is supervenient on the physical base or the other way around is, I think, uncertain, though most people, I think, intuitively feel it is the former (so we will tend to say that the information is on the hard drive, not that the hard drive is on the information).

I'm just making this up as I go along, obviously.

And for an unthought-through encore, how about.....what we call 'mental' and what we call 'physical' are both actually information............which I guess would be a sort of property dualism...maybe even your sort, with information just being the name of the 'stuff' that everything is.

 

[Speakpigeon]

That there is a hard drive is definitely a bit of information, whether or not there's actually a hard drive.

True, but I'm not sure it was what Ruby was trying to say.

While my mind does seem to work in compliance with what might be something like the laws of information, what I would call its substance, i.e. qualia, doesn't look to me anything like information.

But I thought the one thing everyone agreed on since Hume is that 'aboutness' is the very mark of the mental - every mental state, from beliefs to qualia has the fundamental property of being about something. How is what it is about not information?

And how would we get to talk about anything like qualia if those qualia were nothing but information?

BY swapping between perspectives, stances and levels of description - you have a structure in the brain that feels like something to have. You can focus on the the structure from the third person, you can also focus on the qualia from the first. It feels to me that the structures and their action are the vehicles of content on one level but can actually be the content on another, or from another perspective.

And I don't see information as we know it existing in a vacuum. There needs to be some sort of space within which information is somehow processed. A hard drive or something else.

Hard drives store information. However, I agree it can't exist in a vacuum, but no one, not even UM is saying it does.

One way to get that would be if there's something like the laws of information, which again may be nothing more than an inevitable dynamic and complicated expression of the way nature itself works.

Sounds ok to me, if the laws worked.

And then nature itself could be anybody's guess. Although, I myself would still insist on both qualia and subjective experience as inevitable basic components.

I agree, but I allow the possibility that we could be wrong, but the story of how would have to be a bloody good one that explains (away) everything I find important and is absolutely watertight. Personally I don't see how that is possible, but philosophy has a long history of people not seeing how something is possible that turned out to be so, so I hold the possibility open.

And obviously, I don't see why the part that I would assume us to be should get to know and understand the whole, i.e. nature, if any.

Still, we can always try.

Can and should.

And, bon an, mal an⁽¹⁾, we're certainly trying.
EB

(1) year in, year out.

So is this a good year or a bad year?

 

[Subsymbolic]

It is an effect that is very persistent and consistent and appears to be able to influence the body. It appears to be able to move the arm, it appears to be able to lower the blood pressure.

Yes. And at this time, I think it is fair to say that we do not know if it actually influences or just seems to. I mean, if we had to pick one, we might pick that it does. But we could be wrong.

Yep.

Note that this is not a free will question. The mental (by which I think we mean conscious thoughts) could affect the physical (brain) and thus behaviour and still not do so freely, so that is a slightly separate issue.

Yup, although if it was the sort of mental that uses logic then outcomes could be logically determined rather than physically determined.

Nor am I taking a stance on substance dualism. The question of whether the mental could influence the physical would, I think, remain even if they were different aspects of the same thing.

Absolutely, in fact the same is true of property dualism. In both cases you could have something separate that appeared to influence the physical but that was just an illusion for a number of possible reasons. You need an independent argument as to whether anything influences anything.

(started this a few hours ago, then had to go help a broken down friend and the token expired).

 

[Subsymbolic]

I'll be honest, I think that convincing P-zombies can't be real, because meat works as it does and consciousness is just what it feels like for meat to be working properly. As such I'm never too scared of them. However (ignoring that caveat) a P zombie could still do logic perfectly well and thus access a Platonic space, just not a conscious one, so even P-Zombies could do B-T in their heads, because they understand the laws of logic, maths and so on as these are fully public states of intersubjective agreement about the rules of the game.

Regarding what you say about the BT Paradox, I admit I'm not following, and not sure if it's directly relevant to the OP (downward causation)?

Obviously, I think it is.

Regarding the above, then if a P-Zombie (or any non consciousness-experiencing computing machine since this seems to be an example of a P-Zombie, just not a human one) doesn't have the mental experience to go along with the thinking (cognition) then there is no downward causation from mental to physical, I think (because there is no mental).

Quite so. However, there would be downward causation from logic to the physical. However, as I said, I don't think that zombies can happen and doing logic in a formal manner feels like something to do

If I were to try to think of something non-physical (and non-mental too) which might be a candidate for affecting the physical, I might suggest information.

Careful, 'information' is one of those words that needs very careful managing. If ever you need to work out which of the dozen or so available formal definitions you are working from, it's now. Personally I start from information being organisation, but I'm pretty certain that you are not.

Information is, I think independent of the physical it might or might not be instantiated in, in that it is interoperable, that is to say it can be instantiated in different physical bases. I suppose this means it is not truly independent, in that it cannot exist without a base of some sort, but at the same time it is not dependent on any particular base.

That something is capable of multiple instantiations doesn't make it independent of the physical, just independent of particular structures. I can tell you your house is on fire by email, morse, shouting, writing, firing a signal rocket with a prearranged signal and so on, but 'meaning just ain't in the head'.

If you buy that then I think it might be possible to say that information instantiated in a particular base will affect that base. Hey presto, downward causation?

Well, much of what you seem (and I am) to be calling information is in fact a symbolic vehicle for a particular content.

Note that there is no need for the base to experience any sensation to go along with this process/affect, which cuts out the need for any consideration of the ever-popular but apparently intractable 'mental affecting or not affecting the physical' version of the OP issue.

I don't know, nothing means anything without some sort of prior agreement.

Note also that the question of whether the information is supervenient on the physical base or the other way around is, I think, uncertain, though most people, I think, intuitively feel it is the former (so we will tend to say that the information is on the hard drive, not that the hard drive is on the information).

Sure for hard drives, but as I have been saying for decades, it's really quite hard to distinguish content from architecture and function in the brain...

I'm just making this up as I go along, obviously.

And it just goes to show how people can get much much better with practice.

And for an unthought-through encore, how about.....what we call 'mental' and what we call 'physical' are both actually information............which I guess would be a sort of property dualism...maybe even your sort, with information just being the name of the 'stuff' that everything is.

I wouldn't agree, but there are plenty of physicists who wouldn't bat an eyelid at that.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Sean Carroll
http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2016/09/08/consciousness-and-downward-causation/

But there is a tiny sliver of wiggle room that might allow us to salvage something special about consciousness without giving up on the laws of physics — the concept of downward causation. Here we’re invoking the idea that there are different levels at which we can describe reality
<snip>
Downward causation is one manifestation of this strong-emergentist attitude. It’s the idea that what happens at lower levels can be directly influenced (causally acted upon) by what is happening at the higher levels.

Clearly, the mind isn't just one level of description of reality. Sure, we use our mind to represent our environment, and to some extent reality. But a mind is definitely not anything abstract. It's obviously just a part of reality, on the same level as everything else, so to speak.

Thus, I take the idea that there would be levels of description as confused and therefore misleading. And with it the notion of downward causation.

Instead, we can easily conceive of something else, less potentially misleading, for example a part of reality somehow being a representation of some other parts. We're already familiar with that idea in our notion of brain, a brain being just a part of reality which somehow gets to represent this other part of reality that is its environment. We only need to think of the mind as something a little bit like a kind of brain.

However improbable it may sound that minds could exist somehow alongside brains, I think this idea would have a better prospect than the irredeemable confusion inherent in the notions of emergence and of levels of description.

I can't see any good reason that we should assume that minds somehow "emerge" from brains. I can't myself conceive of how minds would come to emerge from brains. And I don't know of anybody ever suggesting a view on that, however tentative. Whereas we can all very easily understand how a brain gets to represent its environment and we can therefore all similarly conceive of a mind as something representing a brain, or what a brain would be doing, if we just change the perspective we usually have on minds to see them not as a "level" but as just another part of the world, on the same level so to speak, as brains, alongside brains, interacting somehow with them, in a way which obviously would still have to be discovered. I would think there's a potential Nobel prize in there

And the space of interaction between a mind and a brain wouldn't need to be ordinary space or space-time. I would expect something else entirely, although necessarily inclusive of space-time.

I think this is a good substitute to the notion of emergence. It does the same job as emergence, and probably more, and without the confusion and would make a better framework to discuss intuitions about the mind.
EB

 

[untermensche]

It is an effect that is very persistent and consistent and appears to be able to influence the body. It appears to be able to move the arm, it appears to be able to lower the blood pressure.

Yes. And at this time, I think it is fair to say that we do not know if it actually influences or just seems to. I mean, if we had to pick one, we might pick that it does. But we could be wrong.

Note that this is not a free will question. The mental (by which I think we mean conscious thoughts) could affect the physical (brain) and thus behaviour and still not do so freely, so that is a slightly separate issue. Nor am I taking a stance on substance dualism. The question of whether the mental could influence the physical would, I think, remain even if they were different aspects of the same thing.

There are evolutionary issues. Things may appear randomly but they only persist if they serve a purpose.

Why would the brain go to all the trouble to create both a representation of the bear and a thing aware of the representation if the thing aware has no ability to do anything?

A mind that can take no action is not needed.

 

[Subsymbolic]

It is an effect that is very persistent and consistent and appears to be able to influence the body. It appears to be able to move the arm, it appears to be able to lower the blood pressure.

Yes. And at this time, I think it is fair to say that we do not know if it actually influences or just seems to. I mean, if we had to pick one, we might pick that it does. But we could be wrong.

Note that this is not a free will question. The mental (by which I think we mean conscious thoughts) could affect the physical (brain) and thus behaviour and still not do so freely, so that is a slightly separate issue. Nor am I taking a stance on substance dualism. The question of whether the mental could influence the physical would, I think, remain even if they were different aspects of the same thing.

There are evolutionary issues. Things may appear randomly but they only persist if they serve a purpose.

Why would the brain go to all the trouble to create both a representation of the bear and a thing aware of the representation if the thing aware has no ability to do anything?

A mind that can take no action is not needed.

Absolutely, however your problem evaporates if they are just two sides of the same thing rather than two different things.

Your insistence that you seperate the mental from the physical in a Cartesian manner is causing even you to have to question why.

 

[untermensche]

You misread me if you think I am questioning anything except the idea of a consciousness, a mind, unable to do anything.

And the experience is that the mind is doing things.

There is no reason to assume it is not.

 

[ruby sparks]

There are evolutionary issues. Things may appear randomly but they only persist if they serve a purpose.

Why would the brain go to all the trouble to create both a representation of the bear and a thing aware of the representation if the thing aware has no ability to do anything?

A mind that can take no action is not needed.

Yes, that is another point in favour of thinking that conscious thoughts probably do something.

On the other hand, I have nipples.......

I think a refutation of (uncausal) epiphenomenalism would be needed here, but I don't think there is one.


ETA: I am, actually, inclined to guess that conscious thoughts do affect things (even if I allow I might be wrong), but.....you and I would disagree on when and how much the affect is. I am of the (provisional) opinion that my mind may not, in fact, cause my arm to rise. But if we get into that we will just disagree. I cannot show conclusively that I am right. So, while there may not be good enough reasons to assume mind is not doing things, there are enough reasons, imo, to at least doubt (mostly from neuroscience). Iow, there are not enough good reasons to assume it is doing things (in any particular scenario) either, or indeed exactly what things it is possibly doing.

 

[ruby sparks]

...there would be downward causation from logic to the physical.

If I ask you, 'in what way', I think you are just going to say say what you said before, that your conscious experience of doing logic will have an effect, but that just seems like another way of saying 'my conscious thoughts (in this case about logic) have an effect on me' and we are back to not knowing if that's the case or not. Iow, the logic you are referring to is just thoughts, I think. Logic doesn't, I don't think, exist outside thoughts, and doesn't, of itself, for instance, affect daffodils.

Well, much of what you seem (and I am) to be calling information is in fact a symbolic vehicle for a particular content.

I do admit I'm probably being vague about what I mean by information (partly because I'm pretty sure I'm not sure what I mean) but for instance I'm not just talking about the symbolic. So, before life of any sort existed in the universe, but water existed, there was information in water (or water in information perhaps).

 

[Speakpigeon]

I don't dispute that it's legitimate to talk of causation at every level, only that mixing the different levels will usually result in equivocation.

Here, Schrödinger can afford to do it because there's a clear causal chain and he's able to distinguish the different parts of this chain, each with it own level of detail in the causal explanation. Perhaps the critical link is the measuring device, which is a macroscopic object but measuring a microscopic event. And typically, Schrödinger doesn't describe the behaviour of this measuring instrument like he can describe the "decaying" atom. He says, "the counter tube discharges", without explaining how that happens. There's no confusion here because there are three different causal descriptions and each applies to a different segment of the causal chain. The set-up here is reasonably simple so Schrödinger can get away with it, but you're more likely to mix up levels that should remain distinct in your explanation if you try to describe more complex systems, such as typically the human body, and in particular the human mind. Some parts of the causal chain can already be described there, but not all of them, far from it, and that's where you would probably get confused in your explanation.

But the problem does not seem to be that one is talking about causes at a lower level (e.g., particles) and effects at a higher level, or vice versa. Rather, the usual problem seems to be to count causes twice by failing to realize that descriptions at the lower and the higher level sometimes describe (at least partially) the same stuff, but from different perspectives.

I didn't respond because I couldn't see what you meant by "counting causes twice".

And then Sean Carroll explained it for me:

Sean Carroll
http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2016/09/08/consciousness-and-downward-causation/

So, I like to think I’m in my right mind, and I’m happy to admit that solidity acts causally when a hammer strikes a nail. But I don’t describe that nail as a collection of particles obeying the Core Theory *and* additionally as a solid object that a hammer can hit; we should use one language or the other. At the level of elementary particles, there’s no such concept as “solidity,” and it doesn’t act causally.

And I would agree with him that solidity doesn’t act causally at the level of elementary particles, or at least that we don't have any scientific theory as to how that would work.

And, consequently, I would insist that mixing different levels of causality in one causal explanation is likely to end up in equivocation, especially if you're not Schrödinger.

Let me complement this with a more explicit example of possible confusion provided by th same link:

Henrik Røed Sherling
http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2016/09/08/consciousness-and-downward-causation/

your argument against the existence of downward causation boils down to the incompatible vocabularies of lower-level and higher-level theories? I.e. that there is no such thing as a gluon in Fluid Dynamics, nor anything such as a fluid in the Standard Model, so a cause in one theory cannot have an effect in the other simply because causes and effects are different things in the different theories; gluons don’t affect fluidity, temperatures and pressures do; fluids don’t affect gluons, quarks and fields do.

Sorry if I'm missing something here.
EB